The problem of constitutional legitimation: what the debate on electoral quotas tells us about the legitimacy of decision-making rules in constitutional choice

Proponents of electoral quotas have a ‘dependent interpretation’ of democracy, i.e. they have formed an opinion on which decision-making rules are fair on the basis of their prior approval of the outcomes these rules are likely to generate. The article argues that this position causes an irresolvable problem for constitutional processes that seek to legitimately enact institutional change. While constitutional revision governed by formal equality allows the introduction of electoral quotas, this avenue is normatively untenable for proponents of affirmative action if they are consistent with their claim that formal equality reproduces biases and power asymmetries at all levels of decision-making. Their critique raises a fundamental challenge to the constitutional revision rule itself as equally unfair. Without consensus on the decision-making process by which new post-constitutional rules can be legitimately enacted, procedural fairness becomes an issue impossible to resolve at the stage of constitutional choice. This problem of legitimation affects all instances of constitutional choice in which there are opposing views not only about the desired outcome of the process but also about the decision-making rules that govern constitutional choice

Just the Facts? Media Coverage of Female and Male High Court Appointees in Five Democracies

In this article, we examine gender differences in news media portrayals of nominees to high courts and whether those differences vary across country and time. Although past research has examined gender differences in news media coverage of candidates for elective office, few studies have looked at media coverage of high court nominees. As women are increasingly nominated to courts around the world, it is important to examine how nominations are covered by the news media and whether there is significant variation in coverage based on gender. We analyze media coverage of high court justices in five democracies: Argentina, Australia, Canada, South Africa, and the United States. We compare coverage of women appointed to the highest court with coverage of the most temporally proximate male nominees. We also compare coverage over time within each country as well as between countries that nominated women early with those that did so more recently. We find some evidence of gendered coverage, especially with regard to the attention paid to the gender of the women appointees

Replication data for: Does Decentralization Improve Perceptions of Accountability? Attitudinal Evidence from Colombia

Decentralization is argued to create incentives for local and regional politicians to be more responsive and accountable to their constituents, but few studies have directly tested this claim. We use survey data from Colombia to examine individual-level evaluations of the degree to which decentralization prompts citizens to view department government as more accountable. We estimate the effect of administrative, fiscal, and political decentralization, controlling for participation, political knowledge, confidence in government, education, and income on perceptions of accountability. Our results indicate that administrative and fiscal decentralization improve perceptions of accountability, while political decentralization does not

Replication Data for: Leading Toward Equality: The Effect of Women Mayors on Gender Equality in Local Bureaucracies

Do women elected officials contribute to the creation of public sector workforces that are more representative of the populations they serve? A more representative bureaucracy is expected to produce better outcomes, and thus understanding the role that elected leadership plays in diversifying the bureaucracy is important. Using data from over 5000 Brazilian municipalities from 2001 to 2012, we examine whether the election of women mayors leads to the formation of municipal executive bureaucracies that are more representative in terms of gender. In addition, we test whether the presence of a woman mayor leads to increased wages for women bureaucrats and smaller wage gaps between men and women bureaucrats. We find that while women mayors do not increase women’s numerical representation in the municipal executive bureaucracy, they do contribute to the creation of bureaucracies with fewer gender inequalities. Electing a woman mayor increases the average wages of women bureaucrats and decreases the gender wage gap in the bureaucracy. These findings suggest that women mayors advocate for the promotion of women to leadership positions and reduce the gap between men’s and women’s ranks in the bureaucracy since the salaries of Brazilian civil servants are linked to their positions